Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union (Central Victory)
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советского Союза, Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union (USSR) (Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик Советского Союза), sometimes simply but incorrectly refered to as Communist Russia (Russian: Коммунистическая Россия) was a constitutionally socialist state that existed between 1922 and 1943. The common short name was the Soviet Union. A soviet was a council, the theoretical basis for the socialist society of the USSR. The Soviet Union bordered the Kingdom of Finland to the north-west, Gulf of Finland, Greater German Empire, Belarusian People's Republic, and Ukrainian People's Republic to the west, the Ottoman Empire to the south-west, Persia, Afghanistan, Republic of India, Republic of China-Nanjing, Tuvan People's Republic, and the Mongolian People's Republic to the south, and shared maritime borders with the Empire of Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the divided Sakhalin Islands, and the United States by the Bering Strait. At 21,059,290 square kilometres (8,072,691 square miles), the Soviet Union was at the time the world's largest nation, covering more than one-eighth of Earth's inhabited land area. Soviet Union was also the world's third largest nation by population at that time with over 200,000,000 people, with over 60 percent of the Soviet population living in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the largest, most populous and the economically most developed Soviet republic. The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation in 1922 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1943. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly-centralized government and economy until 1943, when the Soviet state collapsed. The USSR emerged in the wake of World War I, when the old Russian Empire collapsed during the Russian Revolution. After a chaotic period known as the Russian Civil War, Vladimir Lenin, and the Bolshevik Party, gained power over most of the Old Russian Empire. After Lenin's death, the power eventually went to Josef Stalin, who with his command economy and brutal methods got the country through a large-scale industrialization. Stalin established a planned economy and suppressed political opposition to him and the Communist Party. The USSR led an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy and attacked a number of countries. The USSR built up a massive army and invaded its lost territories in 1939. The Soviet Union made aggressive territorial gains when the Democratic Republic of Georgia, Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, threatening war if they were not met. The Democratic Republic of Armenia was later annexed by the Soviets in 1939. Stalin made a pacts with France and United Kingdom resulting in the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance and the Anglo-Soviet Agreement, following which the Soviet invasion of Eastern Europe began when Stalin invaded Belarus and Ukraine in September 1939, which was the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The Soviet Union conquered half of Europe by 1940, and nearly defeated its major foe: Germany. Communist regimes were established in conquered areas, who would engage the Soviet enemies but mostly served as occupation authorities. Gulags, established as early as 1930, were used to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime. The number of camps quadrupled between 1939 and 1942, as slave-laborers from across Europe, Jews, political prisoners, criminals, and others were imprisoned. Over 30 million, most of them civillians, died at the Eastern Front, making it by far the largest and bloodiest threatre of World War II. During the war, the Soviet Union conquered and occupied most of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and parts of the Middle East. The Soviets persecuted and murdered millions of minorities and political prisoners in the Holocaust. Despite an alliance with other nations, mainly French Fourth Republic and the United Kingdom, the Allied Powers, the tide turned after the failure of the Vistula–Oder Offensive—the invasion of the Greater German Empire—in 1941. The Germans counter-attacked in a series of huge, fierce battles that overwhelmed the Soviets. The Soviet Union was in danger of being overrun in 1943 by majority of the Axis Powers from the west and later by the Japanese Empire from the east. The victorious Axis initiated a policy of decommunization, the decommunization of Russia and put the Soviet leadership on trial for war crimes at the Petrograd Trials. By 1943, the USSR had been defeated and occupied by the Axis Powers: Germany, Kingdom of Finland, and the Empire of Japan. In 1949, the Soviet Union was succeeded by the Russian Republic, Siberian Republic, and the Far Eastern Republic, puppet-states of the Greater German Empire and the Empire of Japan, respectively. Category:Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union (Central Victory) Category:Nations (Central Victory) Category:Central Victory